Her protagonists are all black females, a demographic that is sorely underrepresented in literature and movies, and, most particularly, on the stage. Like Albee, Ibsen, Bergman, and other great writers of the stage and screen, her theme is the assertion of identity against oppressive forces, both interior and exterior.
But race is not the preoccupying theme of Collins’ work. When there are white characters, the issue of race is frankly discussed.
Instead of the blunt brutality of institutionalized racism, she delved into the more subtle and delicate dynamics of family, marital, and male-female and female-female relationships (most prominently in her posthumously published short-story collection, Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?). Instead of poverty, crime, addiction, hopelessness, and the insurmountable challenges of the black underclass, she chose to write about the lives of the prosperous and educated middle class. Now I can’t stop thinking of her and the many other groundbreaking writers - many of color, many women - who did not get their due when they were alive, or will never get their due, or failed to even get published.Ī prolific, accomplished, and visionary writer and filmmaker, Collins did not receive the commercial success and critical acclaim she deserved while she was alive, probably because her work declined to cater to the stereotypes that white audiences craved when consuming works about the African-American experience.
I hadn’t heard of Kathleen Collins before I read Notes from a Black Woman’s Diary.
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